Jewish History and Arabs

THE TOPIC IS SURFACING ON A FEW BLOGS:

Palestinians of Jewish Origin at LazerBeans

and

Arab Jews over at Tamar Yonah's blog:

"Some are calling them Jewish Palestinians. The fact is, that there are Arabs today who are living in Israel and the Palestinian Authority who are outwardly Moslem, but claim they are really Jewish. "Up to 85 percent of the Arabs living between Jordan and the sea are Jews in one way or another, and at least the half of them know it." says Tsvi Misinai, a Researcher & Hi-Tech entrepreneur who is working on a unique project to - in his words- try to bring peace to Israel.

"In 1012, about a thousand years ago, there was a decree here [in the Land of Israel] by the Fatimid Khalif, called El-Hakim. And the decree stated that whoever is not converting to Islam has to leave the country. At that time, the majority of the Christians left, and the population that remained here was mainly the people of Israel [Jews], that had to convert to Islam externally, but at home, they had been like Marranos (anusim) [the Jews from Spain who were forced to convert to Christianity) they continued with [their] Judaism."

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• What do we make of this?
• Could it be a blessing in disguise?
• Could it be the dissolution of the 'two states' travesty?
• OR does this bring the 'ingathering' phenomenon center stage?

EXCERPT

Suddenly Jewish:

Jews raised as Gentiles Discover their Jewish Roots

by Barbara Kessel,

Director of Admin. of the BJE Greater New York.

"With humor, candor, and deep emotion, Kessel's subjects discuss the trauma of refashioning their self-image and, for many, coming to terms with deliberate deception on the part of parents and other family."

* * * * *

"When I got engaged, my mother figured it was time for me to know my true history...I met David, my father, a month ago. We've been in touch on email and on the phone. We didn't talk about Judaism, but I know his parents were very religious...he told his mother about me. She's disappointed by my mother's not Jewish."

* * * * *

Jews Raised as Arabs from Tzipiyah

"Her real name is a dim, quiet shadow, in the mists of her almost-forgotten past. She carries a new name. She has learnt new customs, and has learnt to bear so much from a world she never before dreamt of. The sparkle in her eye, the pride in her posture, have faded with the name of her youth. She sometimes feels she wears a mask; or maybe she has become her mask. The beatings, yes, they came as a shock at first, but now she can suffer them almost silently; she has learnt, she has progressed. Her children’s names, good Arab names, strike, in some deep recesses of her masked soul, at a still-tender nerve; something’s not right; something, even after all these years, is foreign and bitter. But she tries to ignore that voice… until one day, suddenly, it becomes too much to suffer…"

"This woman, this Jewish woman’s story, is true, many times over. It’s a story that’s happening today, right now, with hundreds of Jewish women, mostly in Israel. How bitter the difference between the first blissful infatuation when she and Ahmed had first met, and her life today, years down the road; she remembers her attraction: what a handsome man, what grace, what charm. A man like any other, surely? Her embittered life taught her differently. She learned to wear clothes of servitude, took the beatings of the cheaply valued woman, learnt the language of harshness, raised her children on teachings and values so very far from those she knew, deep down, to be her own. It all started with an innocent flirt, with a date or two, with a man who wasn’t really so different, it seemed, from all the Jewish guys around her."

A recent article on the Yad leAchim site, with answers to frequently asked questions by a Yad leAchim social worker, a story like the one above, and advice to mothers, can be found here. There are more links at the bottom of Tzipiyah's article.